Rethinking Reform: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ṭāhā and the Temporal Reconceptualization of the Authenticity–Modernity Paradigm

Abstract

This article looks to reconceptualize the question of reform in modern Islamic society through the work of the Moroccan thinker ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ṭāhā by highlighting how he redefines concepts central to contemporary Arab thought using an alternative temporal perspective. Starting from the observation that discussions on the reform of heritage prominent in contemporary Arab thought display a linear-progressive character that sustains its dichotomous character as a seemingly interminable contest between modernizers and traditionalists, we will discuss Ṭāhā’s argument for puncturing the recurring structure of these debates by proposing a conceptualization of time that locates the essence of modernity in an authentic past. Not only does this reconfigure received interpretations of concepts of modernity and authenticity, but it also shows how, given the foundational role that the dominant linear-progressive conception of time plays in structuring Arab-Islamic thought, a reconceptualization of time can open up ways of reconceptualizing this entire debate and the question of reform at the center of it.

1. Introduction

Human intellectual endeavor strives to solve problems and answer questions. These problems are particular to a specific setting. So, as the world changes and our own understanding of the problems that matter evolves, we should likewise consider whether the questions we used to find worth asking remain pertinent and whether the way we engage with our problems is still productive. This general principle is particularly relevant for a topic as obviously attuned to its immediate context as that of ‘reform’ in the modern Islamic world. Hence, in addition to pursuing and critiquing models for reform put forward by Muslim intellectuals, it pays to reflect every once in a while on what is meant by reform and how it should be pursued.

This may sound obvious, and sure enough, Muslim intellectuals are well aware of how questions about the need for reform have been answered differently by different people, in different places, and at different times over the course of several centuries of ‘reform discourse’. Some have pointed to the internal decay of Islamic society, blaming the corruption of Islamic ideals due to popular mysticism.1 Others saw a supposed unwillingness or inability on the part of Muslims to adopt Western innovations as the major obstacle to (re-)creating a vibrant society.2 Yet others have pointed to the stubborn, uncritical adherence to ‘traditional’ religion as the main thing holding back Muslim societies.3 These examples can both be multiplied and specified, and they all are part of what has come to be broadly referred to as ‘Islamic reform’.

There is also a different way of approaching the question: “What is reform?” Instead of asking what requires reforming or what kind of reform is needed, we may ask why the reform question is meaningful to begin with: What kind of worldview does the question of reform presuppose? Why would one want reform? What does this concept of reform even mean? Or might it make sense to rethink what we mean by reform? These kinds of questions likely strike some as abstruse or irrelevant. When the house is on fire, you do not debate the cause of the fire, let alone the philosophical aspects of causality: You just try to put out the fire! Similarly, when you see that your society is beset by problems you try to solve them by proposing and enacting reforms, not by discussing different meanings of reform.

Certainly, philosophical niceties should not incapacitate us, but neither should a concern with concrete action blind one from the problems involved in solving abstract conceptual problems. The thing about thinking through political, societal, philosophical or other conceptual conundrums (as opposed to concrete action in emergencies) is that its topic, the problem at hand, always remains up for debate. Arguments may win the day, but for their effectiveness they rely on a particular setup, on a set of questions, on a way of reasoning, on a vocabulary, all of which are in flux. Abstract reflections on whether the questions one asks are still relevant, whether the language in use is still useful, or whether it is time to clean the slate should therefore always be in the back of one’s mind, even when the goal is concrete societal reform.

It is this abstract issue which this article aims to explore. The aim is not to discuss or advocate any particular program of reform, nor is the necessity of any reform assumed. Rather, we will explore the background assumptions that determine the meaning of reform and make the issue of reform or renewal salient to modern Islamic thinkers by discussing a recent example of an Islamic intellectual who has tried to redefine the parameters of the debate about Arab-Islamic heritage (Arabic: turāth) and the supposed need for Arab Muslims to renew their relation to their heritage. The person whose work will be our focal point is the Moroccan intellectual ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ṭāhā, and the particular question that we will be asking in regard to his work is what kind of conception of time he uses in analyzing debates about turāth and how his non-standard conception of time underlies a redefinition of the main concepts that drive contemporary Arab thought, in particular modernity/contemporaneity (ḥadātha/muʿāsara) and authenticity (aṣāla).

Starting from the observation that discussions on the reform of heritage prominent in contemporary Arab thought display a linear-progressive character that sustains its dichotomous character as a seemingly interminable contest between modernizers and traditionalists, we will move to a discussion of Ṭāhā’s philosophical project. Acknowledging the centrality of the question of Islamic reform to his work, we will see how he connects it to the ubiquitous discussions in Arab thought on the question of heritage in a distinctive way, namely by offering a different conception of time that does not oppose modernity to a traditional past, but instead locates the essence of modernity in an authentic past. The argument drawn from his work is that, given the foundational role that the dominant linear-progressive idea of time plays in structuring the heritage debate, a reconceptualization of time in effect leads to a reconceptualization of the parameters of the entire debate, including the meaning attributed to its main conceptual poles: authenticity and modernity. While this study should not be understood as an endorsement of Ṭāhā’s larger philosophical project,4 it does pick up on this particular aspect of Ṭāhā’s work as suggesting a path for understanding reform debates in the Arab world and in Islamic societies generally in new and different ways.5 Rather than engage with the issue of reform head-on, this approach focuses on the structural features of reform discourse and the meanings it attributes to past and future, tradition and reform, authenticity and modernity to open up different ways of imagining Arab-Islamic thought.

2. The Temporality of Contemporary Arab Thought

Reflections on the dominant trends in Arab thought over the past half century tend to agree that the pivotal issue in these debates has been the role that the Arab-Islamic intellectual heritage, or turāth, ought to play in current society.6 While the precise phrasing of this problematic differs among authors, most of them harp on a model that posits Western-oriented, secular proponents of modernization who want to do away with or sequester turāth over against traditionalist, conservative, religiously minded intellectuals. The latter, often associated with the Islamic Awakening (al-ṣaḥwa al-islāmiyya) of the 1970s and 1980s, dread the erasure and sullying of their authentic turāth by a foreign culture that, notwithstanding its acknowledged superiority in certain fields such as science and technology, is portrayed as morally debased. In between these two extremes, some accounts of Arab thought add a group referred to variously as “gradual reformers” (Boullata 1990, pp. 3–4), “apologists”(Lahoud 2005, p. 2), proponents of “harmonization” (tawfīq) between turāth and renewal (Ḥanafī 1987, p. 26), or, more pejoratively, as the “trend of fabrication” (al-nazʿa al-talfīqiyya) (Tīzīnī 1985, p. 90). These all refer to a class of intellectuals who try to steer a middle course between the two sides, finding ways of adopting the fruits of Western science or political and social organization without damaging their cultural-religious roots.

As the problem of turāth took center stage in intellectual and cultural life, particularly during the 1980s, the attendant modernity–authenticity dichotomy has become a widely used frame of reference for thinking not just about Arab intellectual life, but about Arab society more generally. The question of ‘authenticity and modernity’ (al-aṣāla wa-l-ḥadātha) or ‘authenticity and contemporaneity’ (al-aṣāla wa-l-muʿāsara) continues to be referred to in newspapers, on T.V. shows, and online, and its continuing recognition as a central problem of our times is underscored by the fact that the slogan has even been adopted as the name of a political party, following its previous use by the former Moroccan monarch King Hassan II.7

Many have pointed out that the debate on turāth that picked up steam in the final quarter of the 20th century inherited much of the discourse on reform (iṣlāḥ) formulated one century earlier during the period referred to as the Arab Renaissance, or al-nahḍa al-ʿarabiyya. Back then, the Arab world also faced an increasingly dominant global culture that seemed at odds with core convictions, values, and traditions of the predominantly Islamic societies of the Arab world, but which also seemed to offer the only way towards a modern, free, and thriving society. One hundred years later, intellectuals again find themselves called to respond to what one of them has termed the “Renaissance question”, namely: “Why did we (we Arabs, we Muslims, we the East) fall behind and why did others (Christian Europe, the West) develop? Therefore, how do we awaken? How do we catch up and join this modern civilization?”8

Of course, time has not stood still. Even though the question is raised again, it is now done in a different light, which changes the meaning of the question. Looking back at past attempts at renewal and modernization, so the story of the more recent turāth debates goes, Arab intellectuals of the last decades of the 20th century recognized that these efforts had come to naught, that the original hopes for vibrant, modern, Islamic societies in the Arab world had been stymied. Their reaction to this failure of the nahḍa was to reflect on what the deeper, structural problems were that continued to hold them back. Instead of rushing headlong into proposing reform measures, or writing off their heritage as a relic of the past as was common among social critics of the 1940s to 1970s period,9 they analyzed what the deeper structure of Arab thought might tell us about why earlier measures never succeeded. As their point of entry into this debate, they chose the field of turāth, because it is in the Arabic intellectual heritage that many thought they would find the deeper structures of the ‘Arab Reason’ that built it.

Given the critical attention to the structure of Arab thought and of the questions that motivate it, the longevity of the original dichotomy of authentic tradition versus modernity is remarkable. Not only has the question of how to balance the exigencies of modernity with the demands of tradition remained dominant, but the way in which these two poles of the debate are understood—a modernity that lies temporally in the future and is spatially oriented towards the West versus a tradition that looks to an Eastern past—has shifted very little. Rather than take its intractability as a sign that the origins or meaning of this dichotomy ought to be questioned, the conceptual framework is taken for granted and new-fangled theories and methodologies continue to be suggested for the study of turāth.

Importantly, such entrenchment affects both Arab intellectuals who have engaged with each other in shaping contemporary Arab thought and those merely following or commenting on these debates, both in and outside the Arab world. The opposition between authenticity and modernity remains the lens through which Arab thought is read. Rarely is the question raised whether authenticity is in fact a proper counter-concept to modernity or whether the heterogeneity of the concept of modernity or the interesting ambiguity of the concept of authenticity does not complicate the abstract dichotomy—like its close cognate ‘originality’, authenticity may refer to both what is firmly rooted in the past and to what is entirely new and without precedent. We also do not find much detailed discussion of what provides the structural foundation for the authenticity–modernity dichotomy, namely the fact that both concepts have a temporal dimension. Authenticity and modernity make sense as each other’s counter-concept when they are interpreted as referring to either end of a temporal axis running from the past to the future, or at least that is how they make sense as the paradigm for contemporary Arab thought.

What would happen if these structural features of Arab thought were interrogated? Might it meaningfully affect how we view modern Arab thought? Would it force us to rethink the question of reform and renewal that continues to be at the forefront of debates throughout the Islamic world? Might a reconceptualization of the terms of these debates not itself be seen as a form of renewal? What does renewal even mean when it can refer to particular projects that aim to change, improve, or modernize society, as well as to the act of reconfiguring the parameters by which we judge these changes, improvements, or modernizations? And if such a reconceptualization were suggested, would it be judged by its true merits when the audience is primed to expect discussions of authenticity, modernity, and turāth to proceed along familiar, binary lines?

In what remains, we will reflect on these questions by looking more closely at the work of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ṭāhā. In recent years, interest in this thinker has been growing. In Western academic circles, this is due largely to the efforts of a number of proponents of his work who have introduced his complicated philosophical project, which relies heavily both on the peculiar structure of the Arabic language and on expressions rooted in the Islamic tradition, to a largely non-Arab, non-Muslim audience. At the same time, he has steadily been gaining a readership in the Arab world as can be gleaned from the apparent popularity of his own works, the various conferences and seminars organized and the boom in secondary sources that draw on his ideas. Moreover, he appears to also have caught on in other parts of the Islamic world, with several of his books appearing in translation, in particular in Turkish.10

In the following, we will focus on one strand in Ṭāhā’s wide-ranging oeuvre, namely his engagement with the question of reform and the emphasis he puts on the need for creative thought. Highlighting the very early interest in the question of reform in the Islamic world through a Sufi-inspired renewal of ‘reason,’ we will see how he subsequently builds an alternative conception of modernity that depends on defining modernity qualitatively—as the presence of a creative impetus in a culture—rather than quantitatively—as an era that is chronologically more advanced than another which is deemed traditional. This modernity is meant as an alternative to Western modernity, which he has severely criticized for its deleterious effects on humanity. Instead, Ṭāhā’s conception of modernity on a spiritual, religious, Islamic basis is meant as a new paradigm for a world in which there is peace and understanding between people of different cultures and religious orientations.11 An adequate discussion of this paradigm falls outside the scope of this article, however, and we will therefore focus in particular on how Ṭāhā’s engagement with turāth and how he redefines the parameters of this debate as well as its pivotal authenticity-modernity dichotomy. The result of this discussion will be instructive for any reflection on the current state and possible futures of contemporary Arab thought, regardless of whether one agrees with Ṭāhā’s actual vision for the renewal of Islamic societies.

3. Tāhā’s Early Engagement with Reform Discourse

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ṭāhā (b. 1944) grew up in the coastal town of al-Jadīda. After finishing secondary school in Casablanca, he studied philosophy and logic, first in Rabat and later in Paris. Returning to Morocco in the early 1970s, he starts teaching logic in Rabat, where he finds that his efforts to renew the logic curriculum are stymied by various factions at the philosophy faculty (Ṭāhā 2012a, pp. 13–16). This would not be the last confrontation with his peers. Ṭāhā has, consciously or not, throughout his career styled himself as something of an outsider, a lone religious intellectual with a mystical orientation at a time when the intellectual field was dominated by those of either a secular or an Islamist orientation.12 While occasionally engaging directly with the works of other Arab intellectuals, including a prominent colleague such as Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābirī,13 his later writings have been more generally addressed as a critique of Western modernity and the lack of a religious-ethical foundation in modern life—something that, according to him, is to blame for a number of crises unfolding in our time. His mystically inspired, Islamic alternative has increasingly come to be associated with the notion of ‘trusteeship,’ the idea being that man can overcome the crises of modernity by realizing his original task as God’s trustee on Earth and the moral commitments that this entails.14

Given Ṭāhā’s religious orientation it is tempting to categorize him alongside other ‘religious,’ intellectuals, as opposed to ‘secular’ ones. The problem is that, given the meaning that these labels carry in Arab thought, this would reiterate the kind of binary categorization implied by the authenticity–modernity paradigm. It automatically positions Ṭāhā as a religious thinker alongside the traditionalist intellectuals associated with the Islamic Awakening, who clash with the secular and modernist proponents of novelty, reform, and progress. As the following discussion shows, however, this does not do justice to Ṭāhā’s attempts to change the meaning that terms such as tradition, imitation, creativity, authenticity, and modernity carry in the first place. Put differently, it would be a mistake to categorize him according to existing labels because a central goal of his philosophy is precisely to rethink and subvert these labels which have guided efforts in reforming Islamic societies.

This desire to diverge from the standard debates surrounding turāth is already apparent in his first engagement with the question of reform in his 1989 publication “Ethical Praxis and The Renewal of Reason” (al-ʿamal al-dīnī wa-tajdīd al-ʿaql). Obviously inspired by his mystical orientation—he is a prominent member of the Būdshīshī brotherhood and he refers to his mystical experience in the preface to the first edition of the book (Mashrūḥ 2009, p. 33)—this work assesses two different avenues for Islamic reform by contrasting their respective forms of ‘reason’ as an improvement on the non-religious reason prevalent in Western modernity. Starting with the last of these, Ṭāhā terms this non-religious reason ‘abstracted’ (mujarrad), as it is abstracted from ethics, religion, or any reference to a metaphysical realm. It is this reason that furnishes us with a description of how the world appears to us, and as such, it is vital, both to our everyday lives and to the natural sciences. The problem is not that we use this kind of descriptive reason, but that we sometimes use it to the exclusion of others. According to Ṭāhā, the lack of any moral guidelines leads those who only rely on this most base form of reason into various crises of modernity, described in more detail in later works.15

To remedy this, we need to look beyond abstracted reason. The first level above it is guided reason, named precisely for the guidance it receives from a set of values revealed in the Qurʾān and through the exemplary conduct of the Prophet Muḥammad. The final form of reason, termed “supported” (muʾayyad), goes beyond this morally substantial level by turning to the religious praxis of the individual. Whereas guided reason only provides general guidelines for our conduct, the way in which these rules are applied is different in each situation. Hence, to perfect one’s moral conduct, it is necessary to do more than merely follow the law in abstracto; one also has to attune oneself to what each situation demands. Training this attunement, Ṭāhā argues, requires setting out on a mystical path, as it is by engaging in mystical practice that one is able to reach beyond the superficial realm of the everyday and understand the infinite layers of Divine meaning that lie beyond the appearances and that instruct in the ways that this particular individual is required to act, at a particular time, in a particular place.

As the goal here is not to defend or attack Ṭāhā’s tripartite conception, we will leave aside the arguments for why supported reason is the ultimate, most true, and useful form of reason and why it requires mystical practice.16 Instead, we will focus on how this view of reason ties in with the Islamic reform discourse. For, as Ṭāhā points out in the introduction, this division of reason is meant precisely as an intervention in the Islamic reform discourse. Referring to what is more commonly known as the Islamic Awakening (al-ṣaḥwa al-islāmiyya) using a roughly equivalent expression “religious awakening” (al-yaqẓa al-dīniyya), he opens his book saying:

Know that the “religious awakening” that the Islamic world has entered into during the past two decades has resulted among its proponents and its opponents in various and differing positions, the consequences of which would not have been know if it weren’t for the deception that has increased and the sedition that has been caused by it.

(Ṭāhā 2009b, p. 9)

What are the problems that plague contemporary Islamic society following its “awakening”? According to Ṭāhā, the root of the problem is a deep intellectual deficit. The Islamist movement has in the latter part of the 20th century become broad-based, but it has failed to think through its positions using clear, rational methods rooted in the Islamic tradition. The result has been an “increase in doctrinal discord and a hollowing out of the intellectual support” (Ṭāhā 2009b, p. 9).

With his book Ṭāhā intends to remedy this deficit by providing his tripartite analysis of reason as an intellectual support to programs of reform. He connects this analysis of reason to the reform movement by linking it to the second level of guided reason. Abstracting from the more common rhetoric of defending Islamic authenticity and values, he understands the ‘Awakening’ as a reaction against the entirely materialistic, secular, non-normative, and therefore unethical reason of Western modernity. By appealing to Islamic law, Islamic reform aims to remedy the moral deficit inherent in Western modernity. This is something Ṭāhā commends. He appreciates the attentiveness of reform movements to human action and striving to live one’s life and treat the world in which we live in accordance with God’s commands. However, he argues that the mere application of guided reason is liable to lead to a number of problems or “ills” (āfāt). On the one hand, the traditional, juridical (fiqhī) approach to Islam is likely to lead to superficiality (taẓāhur) in performing one’s religious duties and mindless following of authority (taqlīd). On the other hand, the alternative Salafi approach often results in an abstract, overly literal understanding of religious texts, familiar from Protestant hermeneutics. Moreover, Salafism is associated with a politicization of Islam that leads to strife and undermines the spiritual meanings and moral principles of Islam.17

The remedy for these ills is not to do away with guided reason. Just as abstracted reason is vital to running our everyday affairs and therefore ought not be cancelled out by higher levels, the guidance received from Divine Revelation should continue to inform our conduct. Yet, Ṭāhā thinks that we should not rest content with merely superficially following the rules found in Revelation and should instead constantly strive to perfect our conduct in accordance with these rules. It is only by thinking of ethics as a constant demand on us to improve ourselves in accordance with divine command that we can grow spiritually, both as individuals and as a society, and thereby forestall the ills associated with the merely guided praxis advocated by the ‘religious awakening’. An exposition of what the alternative praxis of supported reason entails lies beyond the bounds of our discussion, but it is clear that Ṭāhā sees Sufi practice as the key to achieving this reason. Not only does he say as much explicitly, but it is also clear from the definition of supported reason, which mentions the attainment of esoteric knowledge through practicing the supererogatory acts of worship (nawāfil).18

Contrary to dominant programs for Islamic reform, which focus on the direct renewal of society through political means, Ṭāhā’s view is more politically quietist.19 Reform ought to take place at the level of the individual. By creating what Hallaq has described as a “new concept of the human”, one that orients his ethical comportment on the basis of divine creed and on this basis engages in constant spiritual exercise society, society can be renewed from the bottom up. The goal of this reform is not material or scientific progress, but a spiritual and religious Renaissance that brings man back to his origins as God’s trustee on Earth and remedies the threats of moral degradation and environmental or nuclear catastrophe that Ṭāhā views as inherent to the secular age.20

While these early writings show an interesting Sufi alternative to the largely non-/anti-Sufi trends in Islamic reform discourse, Ṭāhā’s engagement with this discourse remains somewhat broad. Moreover, he does not touch on the topic that is front and center in these debates, namely turāth and the problematic of authenticity and modernity. A more concrete critique of reform thinkers is developed a few years later, when Ṭāhā does enter the debates surrounding turāth that in the 1970s and 1980s had become a vehicle for Arab authors to articulate authentic modes of reform. It is here that we first see Ṭāhā engage with questions of heritage, tradition, creativity and historical time, which will lead him to propose a new concept of modernity that upends the common discussions that start from the premise that turāth is opposed to modernity and that the only way to deal with this opposition is to find an opening for reconciliation. Instead, Ṭāhā will argue, modernity is defined by creativity and the only true source for creativity is found in one’s own turāth. Hence, the way to modernity lies not in breaking with turāth, but in embracing it.

4. Ṭāhā on turāth

In most discussions surrounding the Arab-Islamic heritage during the final decades of the 20th century, turāth and its opposition to modernity featured as a problem. For modernist social critics, turāth represented the relics of history that needed to be gotten rid of before Arab societies could truly be turned into modern states. For apologists of turāth—those who wanted to preserve an authentic identity rooted in turāth while adopting modernizing reforms—the problem was not how to get rid of it, but how to solve the apparent conflicts between the demands of modernity and certain aspects of turāth, such as resistance to democratic values, traditional inequality between sexes, or resistance to the scientific method. This might be accomplished in various ways, such as Zakī Najīb Maḥmūd’s suggestion to quarantine turāth and allow it only to inform moral and religious, not political or scientific values (von Kügelgen 2021, pp. 302–3), or Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābirī’s project to break with certain esoteric or juridically orthodox modes of reasoning and preserve only the proto-modern demonstrative reason that was dominant in the Maghreb. It is only the traditionalist advocates of a return to a supposedly true and authentic heritage for whom turāth as such was not problematic. Yet, here too turāth lies at the heart of the problem, as turāth (or more often simply ‘Islam’) was often invoked as the panacea for all the exigencies of modernity.

How does one deal with this problem? One could of course propose a variation on any one of these themes—rejection, support, or reconciliation. There are bound to be unexplored avenues leading to different ways of reading turāth or carving it up in such a way that some valued aspects are preserved at the expense of others. There may be neglected trends in literature, theology, philosophy in the massive, under-researched archive of Arabic manuscripts that shed new light on the development of turāth. Researching these possibilities may lead to valuable insights and a new appreciation for what centuries of philosophical creativity in Arabic as well as other languages of the Islamic world have produced. If anything, the contemporary theoretical interest in turāth has given the study and discussion of its sources a real impetus.

Yet, there is also a different way of dealing with this problematic. Instead of taking the problematic of authenticity and modernity as our starting point, we may want to rethink it. Instead of solving the problem of turāth, we may try to dissolve it by reconfiguring the terms of the debate and making it non-sensical to speak of an opposition between the modern and the traditional. This is the kind of reconceptualizing thrust that we see in the work of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ṭāhā: an attempt to move beyond the strictures of the current problematic through a process of redefinition. Whether this project is successful or convincing is not at issue here. Although his argumentation is clearly structured, the seemingly endless divisions and subdivisions of his arguments, as well as a heavy injection of neologisms and obstruse vocabulary, do not make for an accessible read. Also, he takes things for granted that many readers will not readily assent to. In particular, his assumption of cultural and religious hierarchies, where Islam is presented as the most perfect model for an ethical life and a morally grounded society and Arabic is taken as the perfect language for accessing the realm of the Unseen through metaphor, is a premise unlikely to gain universal acceptance. Moreover, while at times he is vehement in his rejection of violence—for example, in his book The Question of Violence—at others he has rather idiosyncratically presented a decidedly less-than-pacifist group such as Hezbollah as a model of the creative, Islamic modernity he envisions.21 While Ṭāhā makes a clear effort to engage directly with the Western philosophical tradition he rejects, this engagement has been labeled “superficial and simplistic”, and he has been taken to task for offering only vague solutions for the problems that he finds with Western modernity.22 These and other points remain to be studied as Ṭāhā gains a worldwide audience. Notwithstanding these very real concerns one might have about Ṭāhā’s project, they do not detract from his critique of the basic paradigm of contemporary Arab thought. It is the central contention of this article that Ṭāhā’s critique of the turāth debate and the associated reconceptualization of the temporal foundations of this debate shows us a different, potentially fruitful method for engaging with turāth and, by extension, with Islamic reform. It shows us that possibilities for thought and perhaps also for concrete personal and social reform may be opened up by radically altering the questions we ask.

This move to reconceptualize the question of turāth is worked out in several articles as well as in Ṭāhā’s book-size engagement with the turāth debate: The Renewal of Method in the Evaluation of Turāth (tajdīd al-manhaj fī taqwīm al-turāth). In this work, he chides contemporary intellectuals for not having a firm grasp of the material or the methods and values that made the wealth of Islamic heritage in philosophy, theology, law and many other areas possible. Most importantly, their readings of turāth undermine its creative potential by breaking it up into different pieces (tajzīʾ). This goes directly against the holistic approach from which the various Islamic sciences sprang. Moreover, their singular focus on an abstracted Western rationality as the only valid criterion of truth denies any role to the higher forms of reason described in Ethical Praxis.

The crucial point in this rejection of the turāth modernizers is not simply that they misread turāth or that they are inauthentic in applying modern, foreign methodologies to it. That, after all, might be something we would hear from a traditionalist critic who fears corruption of his heritage. Ṭāhā chooses a different tack. For him, the corruption of turāth is to the detriment of Arab thought because it is only through the holistic treatment of turāth in accordance with its own methods that Arabs can find the true source of creative thinking. By extension, if modernity is defined by innovation, creativity, and true discovery of new knowledge and forms of expression, then the undermining of turāth is at the same time an undermining of modernity itself, namely of Arab-Islamic modernity.

This may sound somewhat puzzling. After all, where does this idea stem from that creativity is only possible through the holistic, authentic use of turāth? Here it pays to hark back to a vision already expressed in Ṭāhā’s early years as a scholar in Paris. In his first Ph.D. dissertation, Ṭāhā was not yet concerned with the position of Islam—or if he was, he did not include its role in shaping his thinking explicitly in his French writings. He was, however, very much concerned with language and its relationship to thought. In his dissertation, Langage et Philosophie, he builds on recent work in philosophy of language to present languages not as mere vehicles for passing propositionally expressible thoughts from one person to another, but as systems of thought that have their own ways of grasping reality and that hence harbor their own unique potential for creativity. This creativity, he argues, is harmed if a language is used in ways that do not respect its fundamental structure and the creativity of an entire community of language users may be undermined if modes of expression are imported wholesale—something that indeed happened according to Ṭāhā when Arab philosophers uncritically adopted Greek logic.23

In his later, Arabic writings, this theory is amended by the role of religion. It is now the combination of “vigor of creed, eloquence of language, and soundness of reason” granted to the Arab umma that manifests the Arabs’ status as God’s elect (Ṭāhā 2012b, p. 252). This superior mode of belief, speech, and both theoretical and practical rationality lays the groundwork for a virtuous society that has the vigor to innovate and engage in creative thought to address the problems that it faces in this age or in any other. The key is to preserve this vigor through careful use of the intellectual heritage that this society has created and which forms the bonds that link this generation back to the founders. To propagate understandings of turāth that break it up into different disciplines without leaving intact its internal structure is to break away from these roots and destroy the only sources that Arabs have for thinking creatively and thus be truly modern.

This is not to say that innovation from outside of turāth is entirely impossible. Imported ideas, theories, and methodologies are permitted as long as they are properly vetted so as not to harm the structure of turāth. However, the creative core of a community (umma) is formed by a linguistic, creedal, and epistemic sphere that is distinct from others and that carries the seeds of this community’s creativity.24 Corruption of this sphere leads inevitably to a loss of creativity and loss of prominence of the community in the wider world. This is the predicament that the Arab world is currently in and therefore its intellectuals are correct in focusing on turāth. The way they have gone about it has done more harm than good, however, as they have not been aware of what is required to properly deal with turāth. A true Renaissance in Arab thought awaits a generation of intellectuals with the linguistic, methodological, and spiritual wherewithal to use the sources of Arab-Islamic creativity authentically.

5. Creativity as the Spirit of Modernity

Whereas the intervention in the turāth debate presented a more focused and detailed sort of analysis than the earlier broad-brush description of reason, the subsequent elaboration of Ṭāhā’s conception of creativity and its relationship to language, thought, and turāth again broadens his scope. Starting with his book The Question of Ethics (suʾāl al-akhlāq), the latent critique of Western modernity becomes manifest. This modernity critique will be the guiding thread through much of his writings in the next two decades in which he articulates what has come to be known as the Trusteeship Paradigm. The most explicit engagement with the topic of modernity we find in the book The Spirit of Modernity (rūḥ al-ḥadātha). Building on the idea explored earlier that creative thought is only possible by relying on and using one’s own cultural, linguistic, and religious assets soundly, Ṭāhā now postulates this ideal of creativity and the rejection of convention as a central aspect of the “spirit of modernity” (rūḥ al-ḥadātha).25

This move is ostensively meant to undermine the claim laid to modernity by the West. It is commonly acknowledged that the concept of modernity is fickle one that allows for various interpretations. Many of these, in some way or another, reference the West as a standard for what modernity means. It is characterized positively by some as a set of social, economic, and political revolutions that liberalized and democratized the European continent and which were later exported around the world. Modernity is characterized not quite as positively by others as a set of radical changes that shook the Western world and unhinged the traditional bases of society. It is characterized by yet others as an epoch, dominated by Western influence, that we are currently moving beyond into a post-modernity.26 Regardless of how the cookie is cut, the West tends to play an outsized role in the stories told about modernity.

Precisely because of this Western bias, some scholars have suggested breaking up modernity into different strands. Instead of speaking about a single (Western) modernity, they argue, we ought to think in terms of “multiple modernities”.27 This term, first introduced by Shmuel Eisenstadt in 1993, has been adopted by a variety of scholars eager to challenge the idea of modernity as a unidirectional process that leads societies inexorably towards a Western social model (Eisenstadt 2000, pp. 1–29). Ṭāhā may be read as echoing this move with his insistence on the availability of culturally specific models of modernity. Yet, at the core, his interest lies more in blowing up the common conceptions of modernity than in trying to tweak them or interpret them non-Eurocentrically. When he writes about the spirit of modernity, he does not refer to a process that is in any way tied to the “contemporary world” or the “history and characteristics of the modern era” invoked by Eisenstadt (Eisenstadt 2000, p. 1). Instead, he presents modernity’s spirit as something that can occur at any time in history. Using the suggestive title “The authenticity of the spirit of modernity” (aṣālat rūḥ al-ḥadātha), he explains that:

It is not the case, as is often thought, that modernity is constructed by Western society, as if it established modernity from scratch. Rather, it is a construction of human society in its different stages, and hence its causes stretch far into man’s long history. Hence, it not unlikely that the principles of this spirit, or some of them, have already been realized in previous societies in ways that differ from the ways in which they were realized in the present Western society; just as it is not unlikely that it remains possible to realize other aspects of it in other societies.

(Ṭāhā 2013a, pp. 30–31)

Ṭāhā, in other words, argues that human civilization develops in stages and that the spirit of modernity is the proper term for referring to the progressive impetus that pushes different societies to supersede each other, thereby increasingly realizing the potential of modernity’s spirit. The title of this section is of course suggestive, precisely because it juxtaposes the two terms that are so often contrasted in contemporary Arab thought: authenticity and modernity. What Ṭāhā hints at is that a true understanding of modernity leads us to the realization that, even though it is commonly thought of as a contemporary phenomenon, the modernity we are familiar with is only its current faulty application. Its spirit, rather, is rooted in the past, and were it to be applied correctly, it would yield a modernity that is based on ethical principles and free of the various problems associated with Western modernity.28

In this book, Ṭāhā works out a scheme for thinking about modernity based on three general principles (mabādiʾ)—majority (mabdaʾ al-rushd), critique (mabdaʾ al-naqd), and universality (mabdaʾ al-shumūl)—each of which is founded on two pillars (ruknān). His goal is to show how each of these principles and its supporting pillars has been applied defectively in the currently dominant form of Western modernity, as well as how each may be applied better by retrieving the true spirit of modernity through a model of Islamic reform that Ṭāhā has developed in various writings, starting with Tajdīd. A full account of these reforms lies beyond the scope of this discussion and is not necessary for explaining the question at hand, which is how Ṭāhā restructures the question of reform and renewal by rethinking the concepts used in articulating these ideals. The one pillar that most exemplifies this act of reconceptualization is one we already encountered in Ṭāhā’s engagement with turāth discourse: the pillar of creativity.

The centrality of creativity is already announced in the subtitle to the general theoretical introduction to this book, as it reads: The spirit of modernity and the right to creativity (rūḥ al-ḥadātha wa-ḥaqq al-ibdāʿ) (Ṭāhā 2013a, p. 21). True modernity, Ṭāhā emphasizes, is characterized by a drive to think creatively, that is, to think in a way that is not imitative (muqallid) (Ṭāhā 2013a, p. 35). Read from within the parameters of turāth discourse, this reference to imitation (taqlīd) would have been straightforwardly interpreted as a call by a modernizer proposing to break with turāth itself. Yet, as we now know, this is not what Ṭāhā has in mind. Creativity for him does not indicate a mode of thinking that breaks with one’s heritage; the opposite of imitation is not to do something so radically different that it is entirely new and unrooted. Rather, creativity arises in a dialectical process that forms something new out of what already exists through a process of overturning (inqilāb). True creativity, therefore, always proceeds from one’s own heritage and, if done well, it progresses while preserving the earlier stages of its development.

Ṭāhā is at pains to point out that this mode of creativity differs from what is commonly understood by it. Creativity does not break with the past, nor is it a capitalist variety that creates new wants that require satisfaction, nor is it a liberal ideal aiming for the flourishing of the individual self (Ṭāhā 2013a, p. 39). These are all ephemeral values and ideals. Instead, Islamic modernity strives for things that are permanent, it aims at values that sustain human progress. Its modernity is not a temporal modernity, but a modernity of values (ḥadāthat al-qiyam).

This differentiation between a temporal and a moral modernity points us to the fundamental innovation in Ṭāhā’s engagement with turāth and the problematic of authenticity and modernity. Turāth presented Arab scholars with a conundrum because it is something that both determines their identity and that it is seen as holding Arab society back with its traditional values. Given this setup, three ways of dealing with the conundrum emerged: there were those who opted to break with turāth, those who largely defended turāth, and those who sought an integration between the two. These outcomes make sense if you accept the basic parameters of this discourse, which presents modernity and the authentic heritage as (temporal) opposites. The picture changes, however, when the temporal order is changed or even done away with entirely. This is effectively what Ṭāhā does. Once modernity is no longer interpreted as whatever lies in the now or in the future, but as a period of creativity rooted in permanent, divinely ordained values, then opposing it to the authentic Arab-Islamic heritage no longer makes sense. On the contrary, it now becomes possible to interpret modernity as being not opposite but equal to authenticity, for if creativity is foundational to modernity and if its roots lie in one’s authentic heritage, then modernity and authenticity are really tied at the hip.

This rearrangement may appear strange at first, in particular to those familiar with the authenticity–modernity dichotomy in Arab thought. But there is a deeper truth here, one that is often overlooked in reflections on the turāth debates. The meaning of the concept of authenticity, in Arabic, English, and in other languages, is ambiguous, and it is this ambiguity that goes to the heart of the turāth discourse. While the most common meaning attributed to authenticity is that of originality in the sense of holding on to one’s origins, authenticity may also refer to its conceptual opposite, the originality we find in diverging from these roots and creating something new: the opposite of traditionalist imitation (taqlīd). If we take into account this ambiguity, authenticity can be seen to cover both sides of the turāth debate. It both refers to the traditionalist preservation of turāth and to those who want to break with it in search for something radically new. Ṭāhā’s reformulation effectively uses this ambiguity to rethink the premises of the turāth debate, showing us a way to overcome what he refers to as a “hoary old problematic” (ishkāliyya mustahlaka istihlākan) (Ṭāhā 2015, p. 55).

Another point to emphasize is that what Ṭāhā presents is not simply a different notion of modernity or a more complicated understanding of authenticity, but a reconceptualization of time. Over against the linear-progressive model that opposes modernity to tradition he suggests we think of time as a recursive structure of periods of ‘modern’ creativity that move humanity upwards in its quest for perfection. The centrality of time in Ṭāhā’s work has been noted by several commentators. While Hallaq emphasizes the opposition between modern time and an ethical time of turāth, he does not work out what this “ethical time” means, other than that it is “devoid of an intermediary structure” and that it “cannot accommodate racial evolution, national and nationalistic trajectories, or a civilizational march”, likely meaning that ethical time is not ruled by the common Enlightenment narrative of progress.29 The preceding discussion deepens our understanding of ‘ethical time’ and posits the introduction of this alternative time conception as an intervention in the projects of reform that relate to the turāth debate. Ethical time is not simply an alternative to an amoral Western modernity, but an undermining of the temporal structures that support this modernity’s appeal.

The upshot of this temporal redefinition is that it clears the ground for the kind of ethical Renaissance announced way back in 1989 with the publication of Ethical Praxis. There Ṭāhā presented mystical supported reason as the highest possible form of human intellectual ability due to its ability to perfect a thoroughly ethical way of life. One problem with presenting this project to a modern public, in particular one attuned to perceiving discussions in terms of a tug-of-war between modern progress and defending traditional values, is that ethics is often categorized as belonging to the latter. A defense of ethics is easily identified with a regressive stance, with a conservative appeal to ‘family values’ that holds back progress, even if it preserves a sense of identity. With this redefinition of time and the attendant redefinition of related terms such as modernity, authenticity, and turāth, this categorization of ethics no longer makes much sense. It now becomes possible to present ethics not as something holding back progress, but as its primary force, since it is through the training of an ethical comportment in accordance with supported reason and the application of this reason to turāth that true creative thought comes about.

6. Conclusions: Rethinking Reform

The question of reform runs through Ṭāhā’s project. From the moment he presented his division of reason in Ethical Praxis, his thinking has explored different aspects of what it would mean for Muslims to think differently, to think creatively. This creativity, moreover, is linked to a program for ethical reform. A truly creative person is someone who finds new layers of meaning in the world, in the holy texts, in the intellectual heritage inspired by Revelation, and in Creation itself. The only means for accessing these meanings is through a practical engagement of reason in what Ṭāhā described early on as supported reason. This notion of creativity relates to the ubiquitous discourse on turāth. Rather than go along with the turāth paradigm and its linear, progressive conception of time, Ṭāhā overturns it in an attempt to overcome the dichotomy between authenticity and modernity. From a theoretical standpoint, this bouleversement of an established discourse through a rethinking of its temporal dimensions is highly interesting, as it suggests an entirely different way of understanding Arab-Islamic thought.

A question that remains is what, concretely, the upshot of this move might be. As mentioned, one result is that it clears the way for presenting a modern project of ethics in an environment where ethics is often associated with often repressive conservatism buttressed by claims to the inviolability of the ethical and religious backbone of a society. This provides a theoretical foundation for a novel mode of Islamic reform, one that focuses on individual ethical training and distinguishes itself from the collective, political action propagated by Islamist groups that, as far as Ṭāhā is concerned, invoke a crude conception of ethics as an identitarian slogan. Yet, it is less clear what Ṭāhā’s proposed ethical renewal will actually consist of. On the whole, his thinking has a tendency to remain abstract and aloof from everyday affairs—something that is understandable insofar as his ideal of ethicization is premised on following personal mystical paths that, by definition, are not generalizable. Where he does refer to actual ethical crises that should be addressed, he presents a familiar plea in defense of family values—even if its argumentation is rather more complex (Belhaj 2018, pp. 24–43).

Notwithstanding this vagueness, for now it would be a mistake to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Even if one fiercely opposes the ethical vista painted by Ṭāhā, it is still worthwhile to consider what a reform of society on the basis of mystical formation of an ethical self might bring and how it may confront the crises of modernity that the world faces. It remains unclear whether this project is compatible with only one set of substantive, normative, and ethical outcomes. Disagreement with Ṭāhā’s position on particular issues should not distract us from the deeper lessons that his writings can teach us about the structure of Arab thought and the modes of Islamic reform that spring from it. Showing how debates about turāth are based on temporal conceptualizations and that the configurations of these debates can be changed by adjusting the temporal framework is an important insight. It exemplifies a creative way of asking about the question of reform: not just what kind of reform is necessary, but what the basis is for requiring reform in the first place. It shows how we may use philosophical questioning of existing paradigms to open up new avenues for thought and through it new kinds of reform in Islamic societies and beyond.